Searching for Wang Bing

BEIJING – The hunt for Wang Bing is in its second week.

True, search parties have only combed a small area near the Wudaokou Subway Station, and these searches usually occur on the way home from a late-night snack, but there is nevertheless a corps of troops looking for the missing chicken wing salesman. I am one of them.

Wang Bing usually works in front of 7-11 on Wudaokou's pathetic strip of bars. With the closure of Zub in May and its replacement with a pizza joint, there is really only one bar, Propaganda. The chicken wing sellers keep coming each day, drawn by the hundreds drawn to that underground dance floor and hoping their name recognition will mean a few students will stop by for a wing or two after a hard night out in a more happening district.

But upon returning from Laos I couldn't locate Wang Bing. There was no sign of him, nor him eager assistant, Calvin, from Zach's birthday party a few months back. Instead a man wearing a polyester black-and-white Polo shirt stood and Wang Bing's position.

He introduced himself as Wang Bing's younger brother. Wang Bing, he said, now sells wings in another place. All of his old costumers are now encouraged to patronize his sibling.

"If you're his sibling," I said. "Where was he born?"

No response. Wang Bing's from Chongqing. I learned that on my eighth wing. This man may have known Wang Bing, but he wasn't family.

I moved down the line of vendors, asking about Wang Bing's fate. I heard a couple different stories. Some confirmed that yes, Wang Bing had moved on. Others said no, Wang Bing's just home visiting relatives. He'd be back soon.

A week passed. I became a prostitute and waited for my new credit cards to arrive. I stayed at Dongshengyuan – East Rising Apartment Complex – in a friend's apartment. Each night I passed the line of roast wings, stopping frequently for a wing or two.
One night a group of shirtless Chinese spilled out of Propaganda, running after a Frenchman. They circled him, lunging forward, kicking and punching before retreating. A couple of the Frenchman's compatriots joined in, and the Chinese responded by breaking bottles. A waiter at the new pizza restaurant, Pyro Pizza, tried to break up the fight and wound up with a piece of glass in his left forearm. The police eventually had to be called, and with the sounds of sirens the shirtless Chinese scattered.

"Huai ren." Little Wang Bing said. Bad people.

And with the new semester about to begin, that's where the bone lies. Wang Bing, the great personality of last semester, is missing. Perhaps no one at Tsinghua will ever see him or his third thumb again. The story is frustratingly incomplete, and I should accept there is a good possibility that Wang Bang has disappeared into the vast ocean of Beijingers, and that he won’t surface near my life again.


Previous Mostly Red Entries about Wang Bing:

Celvin
Wang Bing’s Long Day
His Wings Still Flap
Birds of a Feather, Grill Together